State Capital Raipur on Friday evening witnessed traffic mess on several roads, including Telibandha Chowk Boulevard on Ring Road-1, leading all the way to Nava Raipur via Raipur-Mahasamund National Highway-53. The cascading effect of the unprecedented traffic snarls was also witnessed on major busy routes leading in-and-out from already congested and choked city roads. The most horrifying situation was reported at both the directions of Ring Road-3 turning, situated in the vicinity of Mandir Hasaud area on NH-53, where heavy vehicular traffic was spotted caught in prolong jams, since motorists – a sea of cricket fans – from all the directions, were converging at Cherikhedi area to move into the Nava Raipur direction. To sum up, all the roads leading to Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh International Cricket Stadium, where the 4th match of T20I bilateral series between India and Australia, commenced from 7 pm on Friday, were caught in a ‘chock-a-block’ situation.

 

Although the Raipur Traffic Police had made and executed elaborate traffic plans to ensure smooth flow of traffic and safety of spectators, the desired results could not be achieved. Thanks to peak evening vehicular traffic coinciding with Raipurians scant respect for traffic laws and day-specific traffic advisory. The Raipurians, however, were quick to hold Traffic Police responsible for the mismanagement saying the police higher-ups failed to give a proper alternative traffic plan to ensure smooth flow. At around 6.26 pm on Thursday evening, the long queues of vehicles were witnessed on both sides of the Telibandha main road boulevard (from Telibandha expressway under-bridge to VIP Road Chowk) where the helpless traffic failed to give relief to the motorists to reach their destinations. The commoners – particularly those not inclined towards the gentlemen’s game – had to bear the brunt of the gridlocks as on their return journey from the workplaces, from Nava Raipur to old city and vice-versa, faced a great deal of inconvenience.

 

The city police higher-ups said that the pressure of the traffic increased on the roads of Raipur due to massive plying of Nava Raipur-bound vehicles from different districts and capital city, in addition to floating traffic of heavy vehicles. Consequently, when the traffic police tried to divert the massive incoming vehicular flow towards Nava Raipur, in an apparent bid to ease the congestion, commoners ‘unnecessarily and unwillingly’ got stuck in the bumper-to-bumper traffic. Moreover, the condition of traffic movement was equally worse in Nava Raipur, when a sea of on-foot spectators from multiple directions collided with incoming traffic of vehicles from various directions.